A prominent branch of stated preference estimation is known as contingent valuation methodology (CVM). Essentially, contingent valuation methodology involves asking a sample of individuals how much they would be willing to pay for a marginal change in the quantity of a public good provided. This...

Many welfare-reliant and working poor families experience difficulties making ends meet and thus must develop strategies to cope with competing demands for limited resources. Needs, resources, and the strategies low-income families use to negotiate competing priorities change as family...

Policy analysis was conceived in controversy. Beginning in the 1960s, critics such as Lawrence Tribe, Edward Banfield, Charles Lindblom, Richard Nelson, and Martin Rein have attacked the way policy analysis skills are conceived, taught, and applied in practice. Within the field, policy analysts...

This paper discusses the common-pool problems that arise when multiple territorially overlapping governments share the authority to provide services and levy taxes in a common geographic area. Contrary to the traditional Tiebout model in which increasing the number of competing governments...

Agriculture is Pennsylvania's single largest industry and migrant farm workers constitute a significant portion its labor force. Their contributions harvesting and processing farm crops have a positive economic impact on the farms and communities where they work and live. Each year approximately...

Interpersonal preferences - preferences that depend on the characteristics of others - are typically hard to infer from observable individual behavior. As an alternative approach, this paper uses survey data to investigate interpersonal preferences. The General Social Survey contains...

In this paper I explore the list as a tool for heritage preservation. My focus will be on extent to which a list is useful in and of itself, decoupled from any other forms of intervention. While considerable attention has been paid to the regulatory and incentive mechanisms that typically...

In this article we show that the quality of the vintage for red Bordeaux wines, as judged by the prices of mature wines, can be predicted by the weather during the growing season that produced the wines. Red Bordeaux wines have been produced in the same place and much the same way for hundreds...

We analyze the incentives for interest groups to lobby the legislature for favorable policy and compare two institutional frameworks, a U.S. Congress-style legislature and a European-style parliament. The results provide a rationale for why lobby groups are more active in the U.S. Congress. The...

Studies have shown that displaced workers’ can experience substantial long-term earnings losses. As these losses have become increasingly apparent, and the incidence of displacement has become more widely spread among industrial sectors, policy makers have significantly expanded resources for...